Clifford Chance announced Thursday that Joclynn Marsh and Kyle Kreshover, both of Houston, are among 28 lawyers across 11 of its global offices who have been promoted to partner.
Marsh is an energy lawyer who advises upstream and midstream oil & gas clients on M&A, joint ventures and energy related projects.
A 2012 graduate of Sturm College of Law at the University of Colorado, she has a lengthy history in energy, not only as a transactional lawyer, but as a former gas trader and scheduler with former Canada-based EnCana Oil & Gas — now headquartered in Denver and rebranded as Ovintiv.
In 2017, Marsh joined Vinson & Elkins in Houston where she spent seven years before joining Clifford Chance in 2024.
Kreshover specializes in private equity transactions, advising investors and sponsors on investments ranging from co-investments and secondaries to large infrastructure buyouts and hybrid equity in the energy and digital infrastructure spaces. His deal work includes transactions involving O&G, renewable power and storage, LNG, data centers and utilities. After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law in 2014, he worked as an energy transactions associate at Jones Day before joining Simpson Thacher in 2017.
He joined Clifford Chance in 2023 shortly after the firm opened offices in Houston in June 2023.
The Texas Lawbook caught up with Marsh and Kreshover about trends they’re seeing in their practice areas and more:
The Lawbook: What are two or three of the most important trends that you are seeing in your practice area?
Kreshover: A few themes are really prevalent in the market right now:
First, we’re continuing to see sector specialization within energy and infrastructure investing. Rather than broad “energy” mandates, sponsors are leaning into very specific themes like power, digital infrastructure and electrification. In Texas, that shows up pretty clearly in areas like data center development tied to ERCOT load growth, utility-scale solar and battery storage buildouts in West Texas, and EV charging and transmission infrastructure supporting population growth in the major metros. All of that is driving much more tailored diligence around things like interconnection risk and “speed to power”, offtake structures and regulatory exposure.
Second, GP-led secondary transactions have shifted into the mainstream, including in energy and infrastructure. Sponsors are using continuation vehicles more strategically to hold onto high-quality, long-duration assets rather than exiting on a traditional timeline. You’re seeing that play out in a few ways: sponsors raising large, dedicated infrastructure secondaries funds to lead these transactions, a steady increase in single-asset and concentrated portfolio continuation vehicles, and more creativity in structuring, including the use of alternative structures like dropdown/asset recycling frameworks to achieve similar economics. As these transactions have become more strategic, they’ve also become more complex, with processes around valuation, pricing, governance and alignment becoming more tailored to sponsor and investor goals, and tools like representation and warranty insurance are becoming commonplace to help bridge diligence gaps and allocate risk. Third, preferred equity continues to be an important part of the toolkit, especially in the current financing environment. It’s being used as a flexible solution to bridge the gap between equity and debt, whether by funding capital-intensive infrastructure projects or providing liquidity at the platform level. In practice, we’re seeing increasingly bespoke structures with negotiated control rights, return protections and downside coverage that look very different depending on the asset, the stage of the project, and the sponsor’s objectives.
Marsh: Two trends stand out for me:
1. We are seeing increased activity in processes and transactions kicking off both in the domestic and international upstream oil and gas space. From a domestic perspective, the desire to purchase and develop natural gas assets with proximity to LNG export offtake is enticing both domestic and international investors. From an international perspective, we are seeing domestic producers concerned with the depletion of domestic reserves increasingly being interested in international opportunities.
2. We continue to see an uptick in the use of RWI in upstream M&A transactions. Increasingly, sellers just want to be able to walk away from asset packages that they sell without having part of their money tied up in escrow for one to two years, and this instrument allows for it. From a practical perspective, as this deal structure continues to permeate through our industry, it is critical that a seller does more pre-transaction prep work. Organized and accurate records and due diligence materials are key to optimizing this transaction structure. It is an exciting time in the industry.
The Lawbook: What has been your best day as a lawyer?
Kreshover: It was not a particular deal closing or headline transaction, but more about the moment where things really “clicked” for me as an associate. Up to that point, a lot of my focus, like many junior and midlevel lawyers, was on keeping my head above water with the pace of the transaction. Then one day, it shifted, and I found myself not just tracking the deal, but really understanding the client’s business objectives and why certain issues actually mattered from a practical perspective.
I remember being on calls where, instead of just reacting to comments or turning drafts, I was able to engage more directly with the client about their objectives, flag practical considerations and think a step ahead about how a particular issue would play out commercially. It felt less like I was servicing discrete tasks and more like I was integral to the team moving the deal forward.
That shift in perspective made my practice much more engaging and, honestly, more enjoyable. It’s when the job started to feel less like managing a process and more like advising on an outcome, which is ultimately what makes this kind of work rewarding.
Marsh: It was the day that I made partner at Clifford Chance. For me, it represented the materialization of many years of hard work. During the period between when I found out that I was going to be promoted until the day that it was publicly announced, I spent a lot of time thinking about the path and journey that got me to this point – all of the wonderful mentors, clients, colleagues and friends that I have met during my practice, and my family’s sacrifice to support me to achieve this goal. I felt very blessed for all of these things. I was equally grateful to have accomplished this milestone at Clifford Chance. I believe our firm provides a world class international offering, paired with local connections and expertise. The culture and the people at Clifford Chance make it a place that I enjoy working at every day.
The Lawbook: How is AI impacting your practice and how you work with clients?
Kreshover: AI has quickly become embedded in transactional work in a very practical way for clients, and it is adding value to the services we offer them. We’re using it to support deal execution and move more efficiently through diligence, first reviews of contracts, sorting large data rooms, and surfacing issues that would otherwise take a lot of manual review time. The real benefit to date hasn’t been a replacement of legal analysis, but rather getting to the relevant issues more quickly so we can focus on judgment and commercial tradeoffs. AI is transforming legal services, and we are leading this change to deliver greater value to our clients.
Marsh: AI is transforming legal services; it is simply changing the game. We are able to achieve our clients’ objectives faster. What is unique about Clifford Chance is that we do transactions in so many different regions of the world. Having access to that type of data and combining it with our AI capability allows us to really leverage our platform, experience and expertise for the benefit of our clients. We spend a lot of time talking to clients, to deeply understand how we can use AI to reimagine how we deliver legal services — from processes and decision-making to workflows — so we can provide faster execution, deeper insights, and more value-added outcomes.
The Lawbook: What are one or two of the most important achievements that you have scored for clients?
Kreshover: At this stage of my career, the most impactful moments to me are seeing transactions I worked on years ago actually play out in the real world. It is great to see acquisitions and platform investments I’ve been closely involved with alongside sponsors and management teams move through construction and into full commercial operation (or, in a number of cases, successfully cycling through to exit). Seeing those assets transition from something on paper to operating infrastructure is a real full-circle moment.
In being part of that process, it is always fascinating to see how negotiated deal terms actually get used in practice. Provisions that were heavily debated at the time of signing often come into play in very different ways once projects are in construction, ramp-up, or monetization phases. If anything, it’s reinforced that while the legal work is important, the real driver of success is the quality of the sponsors and management teams executing the business plan. Our role as legal counsel is to help build a structure that works in the background, but the outcomes ultimately reflect the strength of the underlying project and the people running it.
Marsh: Seeing our clients achieve their objectives is truly rewarding to me. One of my favorite parts about the practice of law is the relationship-building aspect. I simply cannot help myself from becoming personally and emotionally invested in our clients since they trust us to protect them and get them to the goal. I recall a management team that I worked with for years, where I helped them purchase their assets, develop and grow the assets and then sell them for a considerable profit. That experience brings a smile to my face. At the time of the sale, I knew all about their husbands/wives, kids, grandkids, activities, favorite vacation spots, etc. – they were not just my clients, they were my friends. And, understanding that their families are better off and realizing that I played a role in that is what makes all those late nights worth it to me.